Chapter 7. Conclusion

C h a p t e r 7

 

Conclusion

 

You who are so liberal, so humane, who take the love of culture to

the point of affection, you pretend to forget that you have colonies

where massacres are committed in your name.

— Jean- Paul Sartre, September 1961

 

Today the colonial past has a notable place in the public and political dis-course of the former colonial nations.1 Particularly noticeable are revisionist

trends that attempt to glorify the role of the metropoles and place their colo-

nial era in a positive light. Following an official visit to Kenya as chancellor

of the exchequer in February 2005, Gordon Brown said, for example, that

Great Britain finally had to stop apologizing for colonialism and should in-

stead look back with pride at its major colonial achievements in Africa.2 At

about the same time, on 23 February 2005, the French National Assembly

passed a law meant to regulate the way its own colonial history was han-dled. It stipulated that the curriculum in French schools present “above all

the positive role of the French presence on other continents, particularly in

North Africa”3 and duly honor the sacrifice made by the French army there.

The law made absolutely no mention of the dark chapter of French colonial

history but exhibited instead the symptoms of national amnesia, as the British

finance minister had.4

For this reason, the historical analysis of the interrelated topics of co-

lonialism and violence seems more important than ever. Contrary to other studies in the field of “violent decolonization,” this book does not look merely

at the historical events of the decolonization wars5 or just provide a depiction 232 Chapter 7

 

of colonial force.6 The various violent phenomena of war crimes, detention

and resettlement, and systematic torture are compared extensively for the

first time using two case studies from different colonial territories.7 In addi-

tion to this comparative aspect, the study especially pursues a new approach

in which it concentrates on the link between colonial violence and the inter-

national discourse on universal human rights. These two topical areas have

rarely been considered in connection with one another in scholarly study to date, even though both developments exhibit a great degree of parallelism

and mutually influence one another.

During World War II, the Allies fought for human rights under the ban-

ner of the principles they shared, whereby universal basic rights served as

the ideological answer to the totalitarian challenge in Europe and Asia. With

time, the Atlantic Charter of 1941 developed from merely a declaration of in-

tent to the foundation for the new postwar world order. By arguing that they

were fighting for freedom and equality worldwide, the European metropoles

mobilized their resources in the colonies. This mobilization led to decisive changes in the colonial structure and aroused expectation among the colo-

nial populations that they would be correspondingly compensated for their

major contribution to the Allied victory. In this way, World War II became

the crucial turning point in the history of colonialism. When the war ended,

the colonial powers discovered that an anticolonial movement was begin-

ning to form, a movement that used the Allied wartime rhetoric of freedom.

Leading anticolonial politicians like Ferhat Abbas in Algeria and Jomo Ke-

nyatta in Kenya succeeded in giving the aroused expectations of the colonial populace a political dimension and thereby mobilized the indigenous popu-

lation. Thus, the moral armor for the anticolonial independence movement

was hammered out of the ideological answer that the Allies had used against

the totalitarian threat.

As universal human rights were being established in international docu-

ments and within the context of organizations like the United Nations and the

ICRC, the colonial possessions increasingly became a burden for the colonial

powers. Universal rights were now, as this book clearly shows, in many ways a “source of embarrassment” and proved incompatible with the system of

colonial rule. Therefore, Great Britain and France noticeably distanced them-

selves from the project of establishing a strong, legally binding human rights

regime that was armed with tough measures of implementation. Instead of

manifesting the declared principles, the colonial powers did all they could

to shield their colonies from human rights debate and to protect themselves

Conclusion 233

 

from any intervention in their internal affairs without losing face at the in-

ternational level.

This undertaking proved to be all the more difficult the more critical

the situation in the overseas territories became. Finally the colonial situa-

tion blew open into full military conflict. Inspired by the new international

context, the anticolonial movements went on the offensive and demanded

a rapid implementation of the newly codified universal basic rights. How-ever, the European powers were not willing to let go of their overseas pos-

sessions. Instead, national interests motivated the governments in London

and Paris to cling to their rule in the periphery and to attempt to recolonize

and reorder colonial relations within the context of a “second colonial inva-

sion.”8 The European refusal to make serious political reforms and conces-

sions prompted the anticolonial independence movements to announce at

the Fifth Pan- African Congress in Manchester in 1945 their intent to resort

to armed resistance against colonial oppression. A number of decolonization wars resulted, during which Great Britain and France did not shy away from

the use of massive military force, while at the same time playing a dominant

role in the international human rights discourse on the diplomatic level.

The fiercest confrontations took place in Kenya and Algeria, both of

which were settler colonies and, as such, presented a special colonial situ-

ation.9 In these places, a system based on daily racism and exploitation of

the indigenous population ensured white settlers a privileged position. Every

form of concession to the African majority was seen as a threat to the rul-ing white minority. Thus, the white settlers fought bitterly against liberal re-

form proposals meant to accommodate the colonial national movements and

thereby provoked a radicalization of colonial resistance to the point of open

warfare. The Algerian War and the Mau Mau War in Kenya represent two ex-

treme examples in which the two leading colonial powers attempted to ward

off the process of decolonization and to defend by force their claim to power.

Without a doubt, the two conflicts differ considerably with regard to the orga-

nization of the independence movement, the scope of military engagement,

the duration of the armed conflict, and the number of victims. Likewise, there is a great discrepancy in their national and international import. Whereas the

emergency in East Africa received very little public attention in Great Britain,

the war in North Africa directly affected French society and deeply rattled the

domestic policy of France.10 The British metropole was also spared any direct

attacks like the bombings by the FLN in France, and the military operations

had only a very limited impact on British domestic policy. The same can also 234 Chapter 7

 

be said for the international consequences: the struggle for national indepen-

dence in the Kenyan forest took place without any form of foreign support or

international attention, while the Algerian War unfolded before the eyes of

the entire world.

Despite these differences between the two decolonization wars, they also

had some major things in common with regard to the use of colonial vio-

lence. While in Europe, Great Britain and France cultivated their democratic tradition and attached great importance to the principles of constitutional

democracy, in Africa they resorted to measures that violated the norms of

international law and the newly formed international human rights regime.

The key findings of this book show that both colonial powers reacted in an

identical way to legitimize the force being used. The combination of measures

introduced by declaring a state of emergency in the colonies, the emphasis

on the new military doctrine of antisubversive warfare, and the refusal to

recognize the validity of international humanitarian law within their colonial

possessions created the conditions that proved decisive for the unleashing of colonial violence.

In both of the overseas possessions, the state of emergency radicalized the

situation in the colonies. The existential threat to the colonial system of rule

increased the sense of besiegement among Europeans and became a catalyst

to unleash more violence. The governments in London and Paris reacted to

these dangerous situations by declaring an official state of emergency in the

territories involved. The radicalization taking place in the colonies was clearly

mirrored in the legislation accompanying the state of emergency and the état d’urgence, which was strengthened time and again during the conflicts. By

abolishing all constitutional norms, each European metropole formalized

and legalized the expansion of the colonial apparatus of repression by vesting

its security forces with special unlimited powers for dealing with the indig-

enous population. For France and Great Britain, the incompatibility of being

democratic constitutional states in Europe and at the same time authoritarian

colonial powers overseas became particularly obvious in the colonial emer-

gencies. On the international level, both countries campaigned to establish emergency- resistant basic rights in the human rights documents, while in

their overseas colonies they resorted to emergency measures that meant a

complete capitulation of elementary human rights standards.

Against this backdrop, European democracies such as France and Great

Britain were not the stronghold and defender of liberal values but the source

for the negation of basic universal rights. With a note of sarcasm regarding

Conclusion 235

 

the pretentious self- depiction of Europe as the incarnation of respect for

human dignity, Aimé Césaire addressed this paradoxical situation: “But let

us move on, and quickly, lest our thoughts wander to Algiers, Morocco, and

other places where, as I write these very words, so many valiant sons of the

West, in the semi- darkness of dungeons, are lavishing upon their inferior Af-

rican brothers, with such tireless attention, those authentic marks of respect

for human dignity which are called, in technical terms, ‘electricity,’ ‘the bath-tub,’ and ‘the bottleneck.’”11 At the precise moment that the West found itself

intoxicated with the word “humanism,” it was farther than ever before from

being able to live true humanism.12 Moreover, as Césaire went on to point

out, the colonial policy of violence would eventually bring about the ruin of

Europe itself: “They thought they were only slaughtering Indians, or Hindus,

or South Sea Islanders, or Africans. They have in fact overthrown, one after

another, the ramparts behind which European civilization could have devel-

oped freely.”13

The military leadership of both colonial powers played a major role in-

sofar as they developed new strategic concepts of antisubversive warfare in

reaction to the anticolonial resistance. The British army leadership profited

from the success of its military operations in Southeast Asia. Thanks to the

“Malayan experience,” Great Britain had a promising model for combating

guerrilla warfare that could be pragmatically applied and further developed

throughout the entire empire, as it was in Kenya. French officers, however,

had suffered a humiliating defeat in Indochina, and the lessons learned from this were reflected in the ensuing theory of guerre révolutionnaire. Despite the

divergent experiences, the highest maxim of both counterinsurgent strategies

was to control the population. Likewise, both military strategies advocated

and outlined the implementation of radical measures like detention, forced

resettlement, and total surveillance by intelligence services.

It becomes particularly evident that the principles of international hu-

manitarian law did not hinder the colonial powers in pursuing this strategy.

Great Britain and France simply refused unconditionally to recognize the

validity of the Geneva Conventions in their wars of decolonization. The con-flicts in Kenya and Algeria remained, despite the expansion of international

humanitarian law to internal conflicts, colonial wars without rules. In what

the colonial powers saw as a legal fight against terrorism and subversive ele-

ments, all measures to restore order appeared justified. The governments in

London and Paris did not consider any serious concessions to the Geneva

Conventions until the military option had taken the back burner in favor 236 Chapter 7

 

of a political solution. The internationally illegal conduct of the wars in the

Kenyan forest and the Algerian djebel could not be prevented by the Interna-

tional Red Cross, whose involvement remained limited primarily to missions

to the detention camps. Yet even there, the ICRC delegates were helpless in

the face of the systematic torture of prisoners or, as the case of Kenya shows,

wasted what opportunities they had.

According to the official depiction of Great Britain and France, each country’s troops fulfilled their mission “honorably” in what was called the

“pacification” operations in Kenya and Algeria.14 According to the articles of

the Geneva Conventions, however, they were guilty of war crimes that clearly

met the criteria defined by the Nuremberg principles for “crimes against hu-

manity.” In implementing their maxim of “collective responsibility,” the two

colonial powers created an atmosphere of fear and “counterterror” meant to

deter the indigenous population from supporting the resistance movement

in any way and thus to subject the people again to colonial rule. Therefore, systematic war crimes became a characteristic feature of colonial warfare and

fulfilled the military objectives laid out by military doctrines of antisubver-

sive warfare.

This was clearly demonstrated by the scope of the detention and resettle-

ment measures. In pursuing the military objectives of counterinsurgency, the

colonial rulers imprisoned hundreds of thousands of Africans in camps quite

arbitrarily and at the same time drove over three million people from their

communities, forcing them to resettle in “new villages.” Granted, the aim of

this action was not the annihilation perpetrated in the National Socialist con-centration camps;15 it was to discipline and monitor the African population.

The detention camps and resettlement camps constituted the spatialization

of the colonial state of emergency, used by the colonial state in its attempt to

break anticolonial resistance and to restore the old colonial order. The mas-

sive number of deaths resulting from the forced labor, disease, starvation,

and severe abuse linked to such detention and relocation did not deter either

British or French authorities. Instead, it was simply accepted.

Torture was also a characteristic feature of the wars of decolonization in

Kenya and Algeria. The old colonial tradition of “coercive questioning” devel-

oped there into a full- fledged system. Officials in London and Paris created

the necessary framework for it by vesting their security forces with nearly

unlimited authority. In this context, definitions of “state crimes” appear to

apply here. Despite their international obligations arising from the interna-

tional human rights regime, including the strictly prescribed prohibition of

Conclusion 237

 

torture, both governments failed not only to prevent torture but also to take

any decisive action against it when it occurred. Instead, the governments gave

security forces a free rein to solve the “colonial problem” in their own way and

then protected them against the emerging criticism. According to the strate-

gic dogma of antisubversive warfare, intelligence gathering was an essential

pillar of warfare. The military justified torture as a “legitimate” weapon and

a lesser evil of the war. Such steps had to be taken because of the necessity to win the “battle of information” against the seemingly invisible enemy. For

Jean- Paul Sartre, this attempt to legitimize the practice was nothing more

than hypocrisy: “We were fascinated by the abyss of the inhuman. . . . The

‘question’ is not inhuman; it is quite simply a vile, revolting crime, committed

by men against men, and to which other men can and must put an end.”16

In the discourse on universal basic rights, the grave human rights abuses

during the two decolonization wars played a completely different role in each

of the conflicts. This was dependent primarily on the existence of a “powerful third party.” Despite the efforts of various individuals, the Mau Mau never

succeeded in effectively directing international attention to the enormous

dimension of human rights abuse in the East African conflict. Thus they re-

mained incapable of mobilizing public opinion worldwide and of exerting in-

ternational pressure against Great Britain. In fact, the paradox of the Kenyan

case was how successful the colonial power was in using the moral armor of

the anticolonial movement and instrumentalizing the human rights issue for

its own aims. Thanks to a near monopoly on information and a sophisticated

propaganda apparatus, London was able to present itself to the world as the guarantor of economic and social rights benefiting the African population. At

the same time, it used a well- aimed propaganda campaign about Mau Mau

atrocities to stigmatize its enemy as the epitome of “bestiality,” if not even the

“devil incarnate.” It was not the British security forces but the Mau Mau who

trampled and hacked to pieces with their machetes the most basic human

rights of Africans. The more horrifying the images and reports of “Mau Mau

cruelties” were, the more successful British propaganda became in pushing

the war crimes of its own troops into the shadows, in quelling the criticism of military operations in the crown colony, and in winning the backing of

public opinion.

Whereas the decolonization war in Kenya took place completely on the

sidelines of the international human rights discourse, its counterpart in Al-

geria experienced the exact opposite. During the course of the Algerian War,

the competition for international public opinion became decisive for the 238 Chapter 7

 

outcome of the conflict.17 Both sides used the human rights topic extensively

to gain international public opinion in favor of their aims. France pursued

a propaganda strategy similar to that used by Great Britain in Kenya. On

the one hand, Paris emphasized its self- proclaimed achievements in devel-

oping the three North African departments, while on the other, a targeted

propaganda campaign on enemy atrocities conjured up the danger that the

“barbaric terror” of the FLN posed to the progress of civilization. Contrary to the Mau Mau movement, the Algerian nationalists did have a “powerful third

party” in the form of their brother Arab countries, who effectively spear-

headed efforts to introduce and thus internationalize the Algeria question on

the diplomatic battlefield of public opinion at the United Nations. With its se-

rious human rights abuses, France unwittingly provided the FLN and its allies

with sufficient ammunition for the fight for public opinion worldwide, which

was carried out very efficiently thanks to the worldwide network of the libera-

tion front. Hence, during the Algerian War, human rights became a key topic

of diplomatic contention, which was eventually decided in the FLN’s favor.

The decolonization wars thus influenced the human rights discourse in

various ways. On the one hand, they obstructed significant expansion of the

international human rights regime in the 1950s and 1960s. Together with

their Western allies, colonial powers like Great Britain and France were not at

all interested in effectively protecting universal human rights and codifying

them in binding international law because they were specifically pursuing a

radicalized policy of violence in overseas territories like Kenya and Algeria.

The governments in London and Paris saw universal human rights as a threat to their colonial interests and as a growing diplomatic burden. The right of

individual petition and in particular the planned international codification

of self- determination in the two UN human rights covenants were viewed

as an “anticolonial weapon” against which the colonial metropoles defended

themselves by a tactic of noncooperation at the United Nations.

On the other hand, the period of contested decolonization was also a

type of testing ground and a catalyst for the new human rights regime after

1945; it was a period during which vast shortcomings were being relentlessly exposed, while at the same time crucial lessons were being learned for the

future. This became particularly obvious in the advancement of international

humanitarian law. As was shown, the provisions of the Geneva Conven-

tions of 1949 were far too insufficient to offer adequate protection.18 As the

expert commission of 1955 revealed, this realization had already occurred

during the course of the decolonization wars and had propelled the issue of

Conclusion 239

 

addressing internal conflicts to the top of the agenda for the ICRC in Ge-

neva.19 In its Resolution 2444 (XXIII), “Respect for Human Rights in Armed

Conflicts,”20 of 1968, the United Nations General Assembly demanded that

international humanitarian law be revised in cooperation with the ICRC. The

result of the protracted process that followed21 were two additional protocols

to the Geneva Conventions, passed on 8 June 1977.22 Reflecting the lessons

learned, so to speak, from the wars of decolonization of the 1950s and 1960s, the first protocol expanded the protection of international humanitarian law

explicitly to include “armed conflicts in which peoples are fighting against

colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist regimes in the

exercise of the right of self- determination,”23 while the second additional pro-

tocol focused completely on the protection of victims of noninternational

armed conflict. As this document expressly emphasized, these protocols were

meant to develop and supplement Article 3 of the provisions from 1949. The

loopholes in international humanitarian law that had become so sorely evi-dent in the wars of decolonization were thus closed.

All in all, the bloody conflicts to dissolve the European colonial empires

fueled the debate on fundamental human rights for a long time. The topic

of serious human rights abuse in the conflicts in Cyprus and especially in

Algeria became an integral part of diplomatic debates at the United Nations.

For the first time, key instruments to protect human rights were used, such

as the right of member states to file complaints and the allowance of mass

petitions as guaranteed in the ECHR. The Algerian War serves as the most

illuminating example. The systematic torture and summary executions by the French army greatly intensified the public awareness of massive human rights

abuses in Algeria and prompted the first mass petitions to the UN Human

Rights Commission in Geneva. Therefore, human rights did not simply be-

come enormously important overnight in the 1970s.24 Rather, this develop-

ment also evolved out of the fierce anticolonial conflicts of the two preceding

decades and climaxed in the passage of the UN Resolution 1514 in 1960,

which explicitly condemned colonialism as a violation of human rights.

Only after the wars of decolonization ended and a surge of newly inde-

pendent states joined the international community did the stagnation in the

further evolution of the human rights regime, which had lasted more than

fifteen years, come to a close and the former colonial powers like France and

Great Britain normalized their relationship with the United Nations. Without

the burden of colonial wars, these European states could now fulfill their self-

declared advocacy for human rights. Without the burden of their empires, 240 Chapter 7

 

they could, for instance, decide not to vote in the UN General Assembly to

support South Africa’s apartheid system. At the same time, they were now in a

position to attack the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc for civil rights abuses

without running the danger of being harshly criticized for similar shortcom-

ings in their colonies. The former colonial powers could increasingly deploy

against the Soviet Union the same “anticolonial weapon” of human rights

once aimed against them— a development that would achieve its ultimate impact with the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Co-

operation in Europe (CSCE) in August 1975.25